[SDL] My thoughts on keyboard input in SDL 1.3

[Rainer Deyke]

Bob Pendleton wrote:
> I think we have a difference in beliefs about the purpose of
> SDL_GetKeyname(). I believe you see it as being for
> internationalization, while I see it as only being useful for debugging.
> I use it to print a trace of what keys have been pressed. It never
> occurred to me to expect to be able to present those keys to an end user
> as part of an API. That level of internationalization is normally done
> using a message database keyed by locale. 

Very common use-case: My game has a custom keyboard configuration 
system.  I need to display the names of the keys used in the current 
configuration.  If the user changes the configuration, I need to display 
the names of the newly chosen keys.  I would prefer it displaying the 
actual internationalized names actually shown on the physical keyboard, 
but this is not critical so long as I can show *something* that uniquely 
identifies the key to the user.

If SDL_GetKeyname doesn't support this very common use-case, I have to 
write my own function.  If I have to write my own function anyway, I 
don't see the point of SDL_GetKeyname.  However, my own function would 
be very useful.  Useful enough to distribute as a library.  Perhaps even 
useful enough to put into the core SDL library.


-- 
Rainer Deyke - rainerd at eldwood.com